I
T SOUNDED LIKE DOZENS
of footsteps were hurrying up the spiral staircase as Finn and Philby rushed to untie the woman dressed up as Tinker Bell. Finn got the tape off her mouth.
“Are you all right?”
She looked terrified. “Who…
what…
was that?”
Philby said, “Finn, we’re cooked.”
The approaching footsteps were noticeably closer. They were either security guards or Overtakers. Either way spelled disaster for the boys.
“Who’s coming?” the Tinker Bell woman asked.
“We don’t know.”
“I’m not sticking around to find out,” she said.
The boys looked paralyzed.
She said, “Harnesses,” pointing to the wall. “They’re rescue harnesses, in case I get stuck out there.” She hesitated only a second before grabbing one. “Put them on!”
She helped both boys into the harnesses and double-checked them for safety. “Have you ever ridden a zip line?”
Finn shook his head.
Philby said, “In camp once.”
“Same thing,” she said. “I’m going to go first.” She clipped a pulley to the guy wire. “That way I can catch you two as you arrive on the other end. Ready?”
Whoever was coming up the spiral stairs was moving fast.
“See you down there,” she said. With that, she jumped.
Finn watched as she zoomed away, into the dark of the night. She disappeared.
“I am
not
going out that window,” Finn declared.
“Listen,” Philby said, “we have two choices: we can get busted and blamed for everything that just happened, or we can go out that window.”
“You’re insane.”
The sounds coming up the stairs grew even louder.
Philby grunted and pushed Finn toward the window. “You’re first,” he said.
“I don’t think so.”
“Those guys are going to be here in about two seconds.”
“What if it doesn’t support us?
“This is Disney. The thing will probably support a tank.”
“What if Tinker Bell doesn’t catch us?”
“My advice? Don’t look down.”
Philby tested the pulley and pushed Finn.
Finn felt a blistering wind on his face.
He was…
flying.
It was, for an instant, the coolest thing he’d ever done. He was zooming down the wire, high above the grass and the water, headed for the lights of Tomorrowland.
The whine of the pulley rose to a high-pitched whir. Philby was behind him now. Down, down, down they raced. Then the wire leveled off, and their speed decreased. They were headed above a set of rooftops. Finn caught sight of the
MONSTERS, INC. COMEDY CLUB
sign to his left. With the wire more level, they continued to slow.
Tinker Bell caught them at the far end, in front of a set of pads. She unhooked the pulleys and helped them both out of the harnesses.
Finn looked back to see several men huddled in the tower they’d just left.
“Nice timing,” Finn said. Seeing how far they had traveled, his knees went weak. “That was not a smart thing to do.”
“It was
incredibly
stupid!” Philby agreed. He looked at Finn sheepishly. “But man, was that fun!”
Tinker Bell led them down a very steep metal staircase and into an alley. A moment later, she’d showed them how to reenter the Park. They hurried toward the Hub.
“FINN!” He heard his name shouted from far away. It took him a moment to see in the glow of a few emergency lights what Philby saw first: two figures up near the castle. Girls.
“It’s Willa and Charlene,” Finn said.
“How can you be sure?” Philby said, squinting.
“Trust me. It’s them.”
The boys ran toward the girls, circled carefully, and hid on the other side of a stone wall, waiting. They squatted down and caught their breath.
Finn dared to raise an eye above the wall: he saw a pair of Cast Members that he took to be security guards, searching the crowd.
“They’re looking for us,” he told Philby. “Might be Overtakers. Might just be Disney Security.”
“We’ll get across the Hub and catch up to the girls. We’re just two kids now among all the others.”
It was true: the rain had stopped and the crowds had returned. An announcement was repeated several times, apologizing for the fact that the Park would close early due to the weather. Cinderella Castle had been roped off.
Finn nodded his agreement.
The two boys crossed the busy Hub outside of the castle. As they reached its center a number of lights came back on, and the look and feel of the castle was restored. Some firemen were packing up.
And there, looking down on them from the castle plaza, were Charlene and Willa.
The girls looked terrified.
A
T TWO MINUTES BEFORE MIDNIGHT
, as Finn was preparing to IM with Philby, Maybeck, and the others, his messaging window showed an unexpected visitor. The Instant Messaging program was only connected to people on his buddy list, so the appearance of this uninvited visitor was somewhat surprising, unsettling, and even alarming. His parents made a big deal out of how unsafe the Internet could be, how stalkers often trolled for kids by pretending to be kids themselves. And while he thought his parents overdid their warnings, he knew that stuff happened. The appearance of the uninvited guest made him wonder if it was happening to him.
I’m from the firehouse.
Finn’s breath caught. Wayne lived above the fire-house in the Magic Kingdom. Could this possibly be Wayne? His Wayne? He’d been missing for a long time now.
WAYNE?
Finn typed. But nothing appeared in the IM window. It was as if the program was blocking that name from being written, the way some Web sites prevented the use of certain words. He considered how to work around the problem. Then he typed again.
W…A…Y…N…E…?
you always were the clever one. my name was supposed to be blocked, but separating the letters! brilliant!
Finn wasn’t convinced it was Wayne on the other end of this written conversation. He could be an imposter.
Finn typed:
you have something I found, but you kept
.
it’s magical, what is it?
He anxiously awaited the answer. This question, he felt, would determine if it was in fact Wayne.
uncle wait’s pen
Finn cursed at the screen, not meaning to. It really was Wayne. No one but he and the other DHIs knew that answer.
An unusual feeling overcame Finn. For months he’d wondered if Wayne had died or been captured by the Overtakers. Thrilled to now reconnect with him, he let his fingers hover over the keyboard.
Where to start?
A Disney old-timer and former Imagineer, Wayne knew more about Disney World than any living person. He had once counted Walt Disney himself as a personal friend. A legend in Disney circles, his name often appeared on blogs.
He was responsible for Finn and his friends’ becoming DHIs in the first place. He had created the concept and had overseen the development of the software. More important, as far as Finn could tell, he controlled a secret group of Cast Members that opposed the Overtakers’ attempt to gain control of the Magic Kingdom.
we’re not safe here. do you have video abilities?
yes.
then go onto the web site:
www.dgamer.com/vmk
. it’s a secure link. but before you do that, you’ll need to write something something down.
Finn wondered if Wayne had been in a coma or something. He typed:
vmk was shut down months ago
.
to the public, yes. the site had to be closed for security reasons. write this down. at the sign-on, use the username: imagineer1. your password is our uncle’s full name spelled backward with no dashes or spaces.
Finn quickly scribbled down
yensidtlaw.
walt-disney spelled backward.
okay. got it.
you will see a video link button on the landing page. right click on that button: it will open up a video chat with me. see you in a minute.
The sudden closing of VMK had come as a shock to Finn and his friends. News that the Web site remained accessible surprised him. But he didn’t doubt Wayne for a moment. Wayne lived and worked in a secret world. He was full of surprises.
* * *
“It’s really you,” Finn gasped, seeing the man’s weathered face on his computer screen. There was no telling how old Wayne was, but he wasn’t young.
The video signal wasn’t perfect: static overlaid Wayne’s face, and the sound of his voice was crackling and uneven. He looked and sounded older than Finn remembered him.
“You don’t have much time,” he said, causing gooseflesh to ripple up Finn’s arms.
“Excuse me?” Finn replied.
Wayne was continually checking over his shoulder, as if afraid of being found out, which Finn found disturbing.
“You were lucky at the Park tonight,” Wayne said.
“You were there?”
“Never mind about me.
You
were there. That’s all that matters.”
“It was Maleficent.”
“Tell me exactly what happened.”
Finn kept his summary of the evening’s events as short and succinct as possible. He described spotting Amanda and Jez during the start of the parade; of later seeing a pair of monkeys in the bushes near the crowd. Wayne quizzed him about the monkeys. Then Finn described his being chased up Escher’s Keep, and finished with Maleficent’s daring escape out the window and down Tinker Bell’s zip line.
“We’d moved her there,” Wayne said. “Third move in as many weeks. We had intelligence that the Overtakers were planning for her escape. We thought by moving her around frequently…But it obviously wasn’t enough.”
“What about the weather balloon? The lightning strike?”
“The apartment was locked down like a jail cell. Sealed tight. We had to provide a way out in case of fire, but the closest exit was locked from the inside. Our security guard would have had to open that door for her to escape.”
“The Dapper Dan chasing us…was he one of your guys?”
“You had no way of knowing that.”
But I should have, Finn thought. The Dapper Dan had known the way up the Keep. Only Wayne could have taught him the route.
“We put on an ankle bracelet that would send an alarm if she moved more than fifty feet from the transmitter,” Wayne explained. “It housed a GPS transmitter, so we could track her down. They used the power of the lightning strike to break open the bars. Nothing short of a small bomb would have accomplished that. The lightning also temporarily knocked out the power, which was crucial for her to escape. They bought her enough time to cut the ankle bracelet off. We found it up there in the Tinker Bell tower.”
That didn’t sound good. “So she’s just…gone?”
“I doubt very far. A green face tends to stick out. It’s control of the Park that she’s after. She’ll stay in the Park, we think. But to accomplish her goal of domination, she’ll have to rebuild, and reorganize the Overtakers. And she’ll need the five of you out of the way. You defeated her last time. She won’t risk that happening again.”
Finn didn’t like the way Wayne said that so calmly. Out of the way? He tried to wrap his mind around the fact that they were talking about a Disney character—villain or not—as if she were human. And after all that he and the other DHIs had been through, it wasn’t so hard. Something weird was going on, and somehow they were now a big part of it. Whatever kind of being Maleficent was, however it was that she existed, her presence was very real, as was the threat to the DHIs.
“She needs cold, don’t forget, or at least the illusion of cold. She loses her powers in the heat. For this and other reasons, we think she’s likely gone to the Animal Kingdom.”
“Because?”
“There are several attractions there that are kept quite chilly. And of course there’s Everest.”
“Is that where Jez is?”
Wayne’s face tightened. “You want to explain that, please?”
Finn told him the rest of what had happened. He related what Willa had told him briefly upon their meeting by the castle: that Jez had been replaced by a DHI and the real Jez had vanished.
“That’s why I was IMing the others,” he explained. “At midnight we were going to meet and try to figure out how to get Jez back.” He listened to himself say that, and wondered what chance they had against Maleficent. Then he checked the computer clock and, seeing it was well past midnight, wondered why no one else had joined the chat.
“Amanda,” Finn continued, “supposedly said something about Jez being…different. Like she’s a Cast Member or something.”
“She’s not a Cast Member,” Wayne said knowingly. If he knew something about Jez, he hid it well, for although the reception was poor—sparking and sputtering—his expression didn’t change.
“What I’m going to tell you now,” Wayne said, “is done so in the strictest confidence. Do you understand me, Finn? You can share what you must with your friends, but only if absolutely necessary, and only if they promise to protect the information. It’s critical to the safety of all of us.”
“I promise.” A second chill raced through Finn.
Wayne glanced suspiciously over his shoulder for the umpteenth time. “I’m in hiding, as you must be aware by now. The Overtakers are said to have obtained the DHI technology. They are working on projecting me—turning me into a DHI so that they could mislead our efforts to defeat them. And if they managed to contain my DHI when I was sleeping…well…you saw what happened to your friend Maybeck.”
Months earlier, Maybeck’s DHI had been prevented from crossing back over—a process that was triggered by a small black remote control device that Wayne possessed. As a result, the human Maybeck had remained asleep in bed in a kind of induced coma while his DHI had been trapped in a maintenance cage in Space Mountain. Finn had freed Maybeck’s DHI, and Wayne had then crossed them over, allowing the human Maybeck to awaken from his comatose state. But the idea of that happening to Wayne or any of the other DHIs ever again was terrifying. Unthinkable.
“What you’ve just told me about Jezebel’s disappearance,” Wayne said, “figures into this theory, I’m afraid. It suggests the Overtakers do, in fact, have the DHI technology at their disposal, and that presents us with some difficult choices.”
“Our DHIs went back on line tonight,” Finn muttered.
“Precisely! You’re aware of the DHI expansion plan?”
Finn had heard rumors that the Animal Kingdom was planning Disney Host Interactive characters—using DHIs of Animal Kingdom animals to guide guests through the Park the same way holograms of Finn and his friends guided guests around the Magic Kingdom.
“Animal Kingdom this year,” Wayne said. “Then they’ll put your DHIs at Disneyland and the cruise ships within two years. You and the other DHIs have become so popular that the Imagineers are ramping up expansion into all the Parks around the world: Paris, Hong Kong, Japan. You have developed an enormous fan base.”
The video briefly sputtered and went dark, but a moment later Wayne’s face grew larger as he leaned toward the camera.
Wayne spoke softly. “Imagineering won’t confirm or deny my team’s accusations that the Animal Kingdom’s DHI server was cloned, but now with what you’ve told me, I’m sure of it. The Overtakers have a second DHI server, Finn. No one around here is ever going to admit it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. They have stolen the software responsible for projecting you five kids as holograms. If they’ve created DHI data for me, as I believe—and for Jezebel, as you’ve just told me—then it’s in an effort to trick us or spy on us or manipulate us. What if my DHI is used so that I give my people orders that they, the Overtakers, want given?”
“That would give them control of the Park.” Finn paused, deep in thought. “But wait a second. If they have the same server, the same software, does that give them control over our DHIs too?”
“You see? You understand things so quickly. There’s a reason you’re the leader,” Wayne said, his eyes briefly looking brighter.
“I’m not the leader.”
“Of course you are.”
“We’ve never voted on a leader.”
“Not all leaders are elected, Finn. Some just rise to the occasion.”
Finn ignored that. He and his friends worked as a group. Wayne wouldn’t understand that.
“So what you’re saying,” Finn said, “is that the Overtakers may be able to use our DHIs like they used Jez to trick Amanda? They could have us doing stuff we wouldn’t want.”
“It’s not only that, I’m afraid. If they have a second server up and running—and by everything you’ve told me about Jez’s disappearance, they must—then the greater concern is their generating DHIs for each of you inside the Animal Kingdom. If they trap those DHIs and prevent them from crossing back over when you’re asleep…”
“We’d end up like Maybeck was.”
“Sleeping Beauty Syndrome,” Wayne said.
“Yeah: SBS,” Finn whispered so softly to himself that Wayne didn’t hear. It was the nickname Wayne had given to the comatose state. “But why would they want to do that to us?”
“Because Maleficent wants you out of the way. For good. They can only accomplish that if you go to sleep,” Wayne reminded Finn. “That’s the key, you see? If none of you goes to sleep, there’s no way you’ll cross over in the first place, no way you could be trapped in the Syndrome. They cannot gain that control over you as long as you remain awake.”
“I thought the software was rewritten so that SBS couldn’t happen again. Wasn’t that the point of the DHI server being down for the past couple months? The Grand Opening was to celebrate everything working again.”
“Yes, yes, yes. And I’d like to think the same rewritten software had been installed at the Animal Kingdom, but that installation has been going on while the original software was being debugged. I know a software update was made available to the Animal Kingdom, but I can’t get anyone over there to confirm it ever took place.”
Finn stared at Wayne’s flickering face, his thoughts whirring. Wayne was warning him that the Overtakers had a DHI server with the original flawed software that allowed Sleeping Beauty Syndrome. “You’re freaking me out,” Finn said.
“Yes. I can understand that.”
“How do you know any of this is for real?”
“I don’t. All I can tell you is, as a precaution, I’ve been taking twenty-minute naps—never a minute longer, hoping to keep them from crossing me over. So far it has worked. But for how long? The crossing over has to do with the dream state. We designed it that way. It occurs in the first few moments of REM sleep, which is about twenty minutes into a decent night’s sleep. The crossing over feels to you like it happens immediately—instantly—but that’s not the case. And another thing: I designed the crossing over to synchronize—that is, if you all go to sleep at about the same time, all five of you would then cross over at roughly the same moment. It saves the code from having to reload for each of you.”